Why Teach? Understanding Education and the Social Conditions of Schooling

Description

Why do people want to enter the fray of education? In what ways does teaching require courage? What qualities must one have to be aneffective teacher in today’s political climate? “Good” teaching is often represented through countless instructional practices, but reflective teachers share a number of special qualities: they are intellectually present in the classroom; they are profoundly engaged with their students, the diverse community and social world in which they live; and, they are willing to confront the complex web of institutional policies and standards that seek to measure their effectiveness.

Through an examination of the historical and social conditions that influence teaching today, we will fill in the backstory of education with an analysis of the intersections of race,class, ethnicity, gender, language and learning. By focusing on various pedagogical tools, this program will explore education through the contemporary frameworks of critical pedagogy, sociocultural theory, and multicultural education. With an analysis of what sustainable institutional and classroom practices help teachers become successful learning partners with their students, we will establish how educators can be critical and constructive, notcritical and cynical.

These educational conceptswill be analyzed through readings, group collaboration, workshops, lectures,multimedia and seminars. Students will lead discussions, complete reflective writing activities, conduct teaching demonstrations, and create a community ethnography project.

Potential texts to bestudied in the program include: Rose’s Why Schools?; Zeichner & Liston’s Culture and Teaching; Darder, et.al’s The Critical Pedagogy Reader; Orosco & Orosco’s, Learning a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society; hook’s Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom; Alexie’s Diary of a Part-Time Indian; Cho’s I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight; and Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.